Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
Philosophy – in every field of inquiry – is what you have to do until you figure out what questions you should have been asking in the first place.
I didn’t plan to become an atheist. I didn’t even want to become an atheist. It’s just that I had no choice. If I’m being honest with myself.
It is not “scientism” to concede the objectivity and precision of good science, any more than it is history worship to concede that Napoleon did once rule in’ France and the Holocaust actually happened. Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
Any theory that makes progress is bound to be initially counterintuitive.
That’s a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.
The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark.
Asked by a student for an example of infectious cultural junk that is hard to eradicate, I replied, “Well, it’s like, when, like, you use a phrase which, like, isn’t really, like, doing any serious work, but, like you go on, like, using it.” To which the student replied, “I, like, understand the point, but I wanted, like, an example.
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed – and Darwin provided – was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process.
It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s not an academic pursuit – it sort of masquerades as one, but at its core it’s a test of trust in each other. Are you or aren’t you one of us? And woe to the one who doesn’t toe the line.
Don’t be afraid of a little metaphor; it won’t bite you, but you should always make sure you know how to cash it in for unvarnished fact when you feel the urge.
It turns out that all the “magic” of cognition depends, just as life itself does, on cycles within cycles of recurrent, “re-entrant,” reflexive information-transformation processes.
I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound – if I can remember any of the damn things. – Dorothy Parker.
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.
One of the surprising discoveries of modern psychology is how easy it is to be ignorant of your own ignorance. You are normally oblivious of your own blind spot, and people are typically amazed to discover that we don’t see colors in our peripheral vision. It seems as if we do, but we don’t, as you can prove to yourself by wiggling colored cards at the edge of your vision – you’ll see motion just fine but not be able to identify the color of the moving thing.
Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg, 1999.
Ignorance is a necessary condition for many excellent things.
Our manifest image, unlike the daisy’s ontology or Umwelt, really is manifest, really is subjective in a strong sense. It’s the world we live in, the world according to us.
There is only one way to respect the substance of any purported God-given moral edict: consider it conscientiously in the full light of reason, using all the evidence at our command. No God that was pleased by displays of unreasoning love would be worthy of worship.
You can’t change your beliefs as an act of will, in the way you can decide to improve your skills with chainsaw or keyboard.